the power was off from 930 last night until 1pm today. no power, no electricity…no electricity, no pump, no pump, no water, no water, no laundry gets done….we now have a ton of laundry!

short staffed today, luckily ryan read the blog cuz i couldn’t cuz there was no power when i left for work…anyway ryan was able to catch ernie before he got busy today so they are still struggling thru.

i met steve on my lunchbreak to look at possible pig housing options. we have a plan and he and randy will put the plan in place next week so the pigs when they get here will have a permanent home. i guess i better get writing the xmas letter it helps bringing in some donations and we need that help to build wilbur and charlotte’s new home.

the good news is…the vets called me back, that injection for charlotte has to be given within 4 weeks of breeding (not the two that we guessed at)..so we have a bit of extra time here. if stef and cheryl are able to still go get them on dec the 3rd we should be safe cuz we are within the 4 week framework.

i didn’t think we would be able to cover payroll today unless i went into my overdraft…but we had just enough with one hundred bucks to spare so i am feeling relieved about that. thank you to everyone who has donated lately, you literally are saving our ass.

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Bunny Horne says

Carol and Maggie, I have just written our my 1st 13 cheques to become one of the 1000-SAINTS. The first donation is December 1, 2011.
Maggie, I will leave an envelope for you in the MP Room on the bulletin board on Sunday, November 20th when I am on site for my weekend warrior shift.
When you launched the new 1000 Saints website it was showing 20 SAINTS. I noticed this morning it read 21 SAINTS. Am I #22? Wouldn’t it be fabulous if we could get one new SAINT every single day.

Signing up one new ‘Saint’ everyday would be my, and Kevin’s, dream come true.
That’s all it would take to make the heavy financial stress of running Saints a thing of the past.
Anyone out there interested can visit us at http://www.1000saints.ca and join the team!

If I’ve gotten this straight, this male pig was castrated, but is behaving like an intact boar–hence the thought that it is probably a cryptorchid? If the male was castrated (removal of the one descended testicle) but still retained the undescended testicle, it would still produce testosterone and exhibit normal boar sexual behavior and appear more ‘boar-like’ than a castrated male (barrow). Wouldn’t a cryptorchid pig that had its only descended testicle removed be sterile? What does your vet say?

my understanding is…crypto’s are not sterile. they can still produce viable sperm…admittedly less sperm with only one functioning testicle but the testicle can still function even if it is hiding up in the abd. somewhere.unless of course it is defective because of positioning or malformation.

the real problem with pigs vs companion pets like dogs/cats is with the actual castration…when vets do companion animals they go digging around and find the hidden testicle and remove it. with pigs since farmers do the castration themselves and the piglets are just days old AND generally going to market before full sexual maturity anyway..they just castrate what is there and don’t worry about what is not there…hence being a crypto doesn’t really matter all that much to them and they rarely even notice at the time.

AND! how the heck are you???..funny thing, i was just a few minutes ago (until the god damn barn fire alarm went off again!!!) browsing thru your photo galleries and feeling pretty damn proud of you!

Things are good here in Kelowna. The boys are doing well up in Kamloops. I’m working Christmas and Boxing Day… Good news on the work front: they’ve increased our staffing level at work so we’re working on picking a new rotation that will start in February? March? (Assuming we can finally get everyone agreeing on a rotation, sigh.) That’s interesting about the sterility. A quick web search indicated that a cryptorchid pig would most likely be sterile…but with Murphy being your very bestest ever friend, it’s wise to never make such assumptions. 😉

i have got both stats this year too…yay! bad news on our work front..we lost three RN lines on our new proposed rotations (which quite frankly suck…6 on 2 off and a 7.5 hour work day instead of the 8 hr day we currently have which means a big loss for us on multiple days off) and LPN’s are replacing RN’s cuz it is cheaper for the health region overall…but hard for us cuz they can only see a small population base of non complex client.

yes murphy seems to like me a lot….and crypto anythings are not universally sterile..it depends on the positioning and the mechanical ability of the undescended testicle….never worth the risk…it is kind of like playing russian roulette with viable sperm in the chamber instead of a bullet.

Mauie, at 15 years of age, lost her home because her guardian went into a hospital and will not be able to return home. Maui is a lovely little cat we are hoping will find a quiet and loving home to retire in. pic.twitter.com/9QQB…